


Child of Mine

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, May Or May Not Be Continued, messing around with cloning may possibly be a bad idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 21:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4581105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Irrational with grief, Dooku took a path which he now may as well regret...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Child of Mine

**Author's Note:**

> ...after an extended absence (*hangs head* ~~...I'm going to _college_ (!) o.O Had to get stuff worked out~~), I really need to get the papers I need to type up organized, but this was at hand and I liked what I had upon rereading, so have a partial tale of slightly _Frankenstein_ -esque sensibilities...
> 
> This should, by rights, be continued, but I'm hoping the muse for it will hit me again now that it's in my head... I'm not sure I remember all my intentions with some of the details.

“Can you do it?” A credit chip, one made anonymous, changes hands in the damp shadows--everywhere here the air is full of water.

“Of course,” says the gentle voice, with slight offense that he would doubt their capabilities.

Still, he toys with the vial several minutes before he dares to hand it over. A genetic sample collected for a rather different purpose, and using it this way is... violating _something._ All he once meant to do was protect him from a remote possibility (lucky he hadn’t, now--he supposed) and wasn’t that just one more rung on the path to what he was doing here?

* * *

**One year later:**

A curious looking ship descends out of the Serenno sky. An enthusiast for such things might successfully guess the architect who designed the ship, but that still begs the question of why the individual who was landing here in it possessed it: it was not as if Rugess Nome’s starships went for the asking, and what was the Senator of Naboo doing with one?

For it was Senator Palpatine exiting the ship, and requesting an audience with the Returned Count of Serenno...

...Darth Sidious pursued a rumor, one heard through channels cultivated by Hego Damask in his secret life. As is the nature of rumors, exact information was scarce, but he had reason to believe someone had created a Jedi clone. That in tracing this, he should be obliged to visit Dooku intrigued him. As unsuiting as it was for both a Sith (Jedi!) and a senator (for Dooku dreamed, he had gathered, of changing the Republic in ways and by means its officials should--were honor bound to--disapprove of), he had found himself admiring the man. Even, as uncharacteristic as it was in actuality, desiring to befriend him.

How exactly those impertinent feelings would be impacted if it _was_ Dooku who had commissioned the clone, he could not say. And otherwise he dared not dwell on how this might affect the future, of both men and of the galaxy.

“Palpatine--” Dooku greets him, not warmly by any stretch of the word, and yet fraught with emotion anyway.

The usually well-spoken senator pauses to compose a remark, uncertain of how much sympathy to apply here, but all such ponderings exit his head without leave, for in walks the spitting image of Qui-Gon Jinn.

Jinn is _dead_. It was not _precisely_ Sidious’s intention, especially that particular Jedi, for his heart for the time had prevailed in a wish not to hurt the man he would call friend (even if he would not, in actuality, unless as a lie) by harming one dear to him. But Maul had been--as he could have expected--something of a loose cannon, and as it so happened, both of the two men in this room had lost someone like a son to them that day on Naboo. Mind, true to his own father, Palpatine had not ...loved Maul, and Dooku, child of the Temple much longer than of Serenno, would find fatherhood a foreign concept even if he had know a greater part of its joys and duties. And do not, that their “sons” were in diametric opposition, and they, but ideological right should be: he does not consider the “fallen” Jedi an enemy, exactly.

Dooku looks at Jinn--or whatever he is ( _probably_ the clone, his mind supplies critically, though _why_ Jinn?)--with sad, weary eyes, and gently instructs, “You may go and read in the library, child.” Yes--even with advanced aging, a clone won’t be as old as he looks--or is this merely sentiment? And, the unwelcome thought comes tumbling in, can his rationality be trusted now, if he has done _this_?

“Do I dare confess my misdeeds to you?” the count asks in a low monotone which is not proud in the statement, even if the man is.

“I am too old, I told myself, for a wife, and aside from that, he is the only heir I could conceive of having.”

_But he is dead,_ Palpatine thinks without intending to.

“But--” Dooku waves his hand vaguely, “ _he_ isn’t Qui-Gon. He is something of what Qui-Gon was, and he looks it, but he is ...not what I should have wanted, to resurrect the dead.

“Palpatine--” he rises and strides across the room, as if to pace, “I do not know that I was thinking, to create the man--”

_what was I thinking. to create the Chosen One..._ Sidious is forced to shut his eyes for a moment before he can resume both the calm, benevolent mask of Senator Palpatine and his attention to Dooku’s words. Because he--and Plagueis--had endeavored to meddle even worse in such matters, but with no evidence of any fruits of their labor...

“It seems--” Dooku begins, with words that perhaps were not quite so damning as the rest, and yet it had never been his intention. He had complied unthinkingly to the request, blind, deaf and unreasoning of mind in his grief at the time, “it seems I made a contribution, as well, to his genes.” Something, he thought, to do with Force-sensitivity, but even the Kaminoans who had actually experimented with it could not explain it. ( _Perhaps_ , his inner Yoda inputs cheekily and quite unlike the genuine article, _blind they are to the midi-chloreans. _)__

__“Is that so bad?” the politician moved quickly to reassure him. “Surely there is little difference in doing that and what many couples across the galaxy would fain do?”_ _

__“But he was--like a son, I suppose--to me, the dearest relationship I have had! Yes, of course, attachments are meant to be forbidden among the Jedi; I am sure you must realize, though, senator, that a difficult decree does not necessarily alter practice.”_ _

__“And you,” into his voice came a bitter edge which belonged to neither Sidious nor the senator but was a rarely seen facet of what Palpatine was besides them, “should know that blood does not convey dearness.”_ _

__“Perhaps,” Dooku wheeled on him, “but is it not general throughout the galaxy?” For the moment he seemed to have forgotten the matter of the clone._ _

__“Forgive me,” he directed the Jedi in wry tones, “my own relations I found nigh on intolerable.”_ _

**Author's Note:**

> (and, uh, this grew in large part out of my _seconding_ [a suggestion](http://pileofsith.tumblr.com/post/124188761740/random-fanmix-combinations-part-4) when pileofsith did some... character combinations. Though I'm not sure Quui-Gon (90s EU clone naming!), as I've labeled the individual in the tags, would look quite like "Dooku-Gon" here.)
> 
>  
> 
> ~~there's a decent chance it'll get a bit shippy if continued... I have trouble resisting that with these two. I mean, it really is never traditionally romantisexual but it happens...~~


End file.
